I too have a stash of litecoin, mostly from mining, and am ultimately looking to convert most of it to bitcoin, as I think bitcoin is the long-term king of cryptocurrencies THAT serve as a store of monetary value (so no ETH in this case for me, although I do mine and have ETH).

Poster said he wants to convert LTC to BTC, and I have to suggest the better way to consider when to convert should be by looking at the LTC/BTC spot price, NOT the $USD value of litecoin!

In recent months one of the best times to sell LTC for BTC was the start of the recent bull run, when the altcoins pumped before BTC did. For example, on April 12, 2019, the LTC/BTC spot price hit a high of 0.01842. Now the spot right is only 0.013 or something. I am kicking myself for not converting some LTC for BTC at that time, because I wrongly thought LTC would get stronger.

Hopefully the LTC halving launches LTC/BTC to above 0.2. If that happens scoop up BTC with your LTC's.

Mining has been brutal for those of us that jumped into it in 2018. I feel your pain about not ROI'ing for a long time on GPU, if ever at all.

Things are so uncertain right now that you will be placing a big bet if you go with FPGA. Like others say, research the hell out of that before you throw $20k at it.

So, I have a mix set of GPU miners (1080ti, Vega 56, rx 580) and Antminer L3+ miners. Basically, I wanted a diversified mining semi-pro mining operation. BUT almost every assumption that I have made about profitability has either been wrong or changed by foreseen circumstances.

Examples:

- Prices will not drop too much on coins overall - WRONG! Altcoins went to the dumpster this last month.
- 1080ti is very good at mining ZEC. Will make money - WRONG! ZEC mining profits are being killed by ASICS. And load and behold, with the EthEnlargementPill, 1080ti's are now killers at mining ETH, not ZEC!!!
- L3+ profit is comparable to S9 miner (when I bought them in March). WRONG! Bitmain had a firesale on L3+ ASICs, and litecoin prices tanked. LOL they are having a firesale on S9's now too (3 months after L3 firesafe)
- Vega is the best at mining. This has held true, but only because Monera hard forked to fight ASICs. If Monero did not fork, my Vega's would probably not be mining anything profitably.
- rx 580 is the most profitable at mining ETH. Nope. 1080ti is now. rx 580 is not profitable. For mining ANTHING! Turned off.

And you have storm clouds on the horizon:
- ETH thinking about reducing block rewards
- Bitcoin block reward halving in 2019 (?)
- Litecoin block reward having in 2020 (?)
- anyone's guest when prices will recover. My bet is that we are in a prolonged multi-year bear market for crypto.

Better to just buy the crypto while they are cheap and now and earn money doing what you are good at -- your day job!! Unless you have super cheap electricity, of course.

Just my humble opinion

Just wanted to add comment on Batch 2 Z9 minis.

My batch 2 Z9 minis (arrived today) have the drop down box to choose frequency. It has all the same frequencies as my batch 1 Z9 mini.

The only issue is that they are not steady when overclocking to 700 frequency like batch 1. The highest they will go without pooping out is 668 frequency.

Anyone ever have this happen to them?

My 2 Z9 minis are being held at a UPS warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. I am in Dallas, so I guess Louisville is a major UPS distro hub. I called UPS and they said the miners were being held up by FDA (Federal Food Administration) inspection. I did a double take and said, WHAT?!? The UPS International representative just said the inspection usually takes 2 days, so call back then. If it is held longer, then the FDA will contact me directly.

This, and getting hit with 25% tariffs. Not fun.

Right now (10:29 Central Time), cryptocompare.com shows ZEC hash rate for 968,356 KH/s. I find it to be the the most accurate reporting of spot hash rate.

But 968,356 KH/s is jumping up super high, considering we were around 500k KH/s 2 months ago before Bitmain and others shipped batch 1 to customers.

ROI for batch 2 is gonna dunno. It all depends on how many units Bitmain, Innosilicon, et al have have sold for batch 2 and successive batches. We should have a wager on how much ZEC hash rate will jump.

 

I ordered mine under a Corporation, with a IRS corporate EIN given. I wonder if that makes a difference, or whether it is just because of UPS. Also, UPS has always charged me import duties of around 2.5% in the past. I was never able to avoid that.
 

I called UPS and also double checked my invoice for my import code.

UPS is useless. They say that it's the government that assessed it, so I need to talk to customs in order to challenge the assessment. They have no information other than that the government assessed the fee, and they (UPS) need to collect said fee before delivery.

Checking my invoice from Bitmain, the specified HS/HTS code is 8471.50.0150. I can't find this code in the two links you provided (@efudd). So I'm not sure how my item is assessed such high duties.

I just got a text message from UPS about import duties. I am in Texas, USA.

The are charging me 367.87 !!!!

This is the breakdown:

IMPORT CHARGES
NOTE: the total value used for calculation of all Duty-based fees is 0.00.
Government Charges: 356.87
Brokerage Charges: 11.00
Freight Charges: 0.00

356.87 / 1400 (2 Z9 minis at $600 each + shipping fees)  =   about 25%

Looks like US folks are getting hit with the new Trump tariffs on Chinese goods.

Ugh. Is anyone facing the same issue?

Just got bitmain's ship notice email for my 2 Z9 mini's ordered June 30th.

Along with everyone else, looks like Bitmain is shipping on time per usual.

I have 2 Z9 mini's from batch one. Noise level depends on if you decide to overclock to 700 to get 15k sols, when I expect everyone with a Z9 mini is doing. When you do that, it is like a handheld vacuum cleaner running all the time. The S9 would be like a super large vacuum cleaner running all the time.

I also ordered 2 more Z9 mini's with $250 coupons. Still unshipped. Fingers crossed they get shipped soon.

I have 80x $100 Bitmain coupons that I would like to sell, or if possible trade for higher value coupons.

Coupons expire 2018-06-11 16:51:00.

Options:

1. Trade all 80x $100 coupon for a few coupons => $300
2. Sell $100 coupon for $15.

No Scammers please. That means you,  FriendlySignal / CryptoCoinInvestor / or whatever name you will change to.

PM to trade

SCAM

This is the same guy as CryptoCoinInvestor who listed same thing previous days.